G’day everyone,
Thanks again for all the welcoming comments & links to other Vancouverite and Ozzie blogs! :)
I really miss Vancouver, but well, having a 2nd summer is just awesome. (I came over in September, just missing winter in BC, and in time for summer in Oz. I now have many bitter friends at home). I’ve also never gone to Xmas parties when it wasn’t cold and wet out. My supervisor said that maybe next year, they’ll host a barbey down by the lake with possum, kangaroo, magpie and lake carp. (I actually believed him at possum. Otherwise the lab highly recommended kangaroo, also a pest in the Australian Capital Territory so hunting it is legal)
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soo…
Cloning, the first step in my project. nothing new, almost run of the mill in genetics/plant genetics labs, but can take up months of time if any steps involved go wrong. It’s also given me a greater appreciation of dolly the sheep, the empire’s clone army and other massive cloning projects.
annoying lab hurdles I’ve had so far:
(Jargon coming up): The clones that came up ‘empty." Instead of entry clones with some vector + my gene, i got just the original vector after a BP rxn, transfection and a miniprep. Something that never happens in a Gateway cloning process, but will just invariably happen anyway. (this was fixed by doubling the amount of gene/template added to the BP rxn, so the conc was 250 ng/ul :) ) And then during sequencing of the cloned gene in a vector that worked, the M13 reverse primer (& commercial product for sequencing ur cloned gene) decided to go in forward direction and sequence the vector instead of the gene (all other primers cooperated and went in their expected direction). How a reverse primer decides on going in the opposite direction, I just don’t know…
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life would be much easier and more interesting if cloning could be done with thai food.
Clip’s from The Big Bang Theory, smart is the new sexy.
Oh thanks a lot, now I want thai food. ;_;
(mrr, all this talk of “doing science in some international place” has me itching for a blog here…. no no no no no I mustn’t!
Do you like Big Bang Theory? I watched a couple of episodes the other day and just couldn’t quite get into it.
I confess, I’m kinda addicted to it. because it’s just so dumb, and nostalgic even, so it could be just me.
i used to hang out with a drama student/actress, and a version of the geeky sheldon and leonard at uni, although our 4th/5th friend was more like Jack from Will & Grace. they weren’t die-hard trekkies (more into hiphop culture oddly enuf) but were definitely huge gamers (esp Star Craft and WoW). they also had similar eating habits, all-u-can eat sushi had to be on certain nights, as did McD burgers (so gross).